


a ramen packet for your troubles

by goldavn



Category: NU'EST, Wanna One (Band)
Genre: M/M, barista minhyun, best friends 2park, coffee shop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-01 21:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16292201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldavn/pseuds/goldavn
Summary: minhyun works part-time as a barista and woojin is a regular customer who has an obvious crush on him. minhyun doesn't pay much attention to him until one day, woojin stops showing up at the cafe.





	a ramen packet for your troubles

Iced Americanos; the most common caffeinated beverage Minhyun makes daily at his barista job; but also the beverage he looks forward to the most. He has his fair share of regulars and even though customer and cashier operator don’t acknowledge each other on a name to name basis, Minhyun can feel the secureness it brings when a customer keeps coming back for months on end.

The café itself was modern in décor and with a name like ‘Love Paint’ it gathered its fair share of university students as well as curious elders. Minhyun loved working there – convenient area that’s close to both his home and university, but also the business of the shop without stressing him out too much. Being a pre-med student is hard enough as it is so Minhyun wanted a relatively easy job and Love Paint delivered.

Minhyun knows his regulars now, and he can remember most of their names and orders regardless of whether they remember his name or not. There’s one young man that comes in every morning and he orders an iced Americano to takeaway. Minhyun remembers him because on a number of different occasions the young man had left little gifts for Minhyun on the counter next to the coffee machine. The gifts ranged from medicine when Minhyun seemed to be sick, an album to play new music in the café, and even a small fox plush one time. Minhyun found the gestures cute and all but for the most part ignored them – he couldn’t afford to be caught making advances on a customer and between classes and the job Minhyun thinks he doesn’t have the time or emotional stability to hold down any type of romantic relationship. So, he enjoyed the young man’s visits and secretly hoped the young man would say something more than just his order and thank you.

Minhyun was bold to think that the customer, Woojin, would keep coming because one day he stopped coming altogether – sending him into a tailspin of wonder, what ifs and worry.

 

☼

“Going to Love Paint today, Woojin?” Jihoon, his roommate calls out from the bathroom.

“Yes. Why?”

Jihoon walks to the doorway, drying his hair with a towel as he lets a smirk ripple across his lips. “Could I join you?”

Woojin rolls his eyes, and continues to shove his laptop and notepad into his backpack. There was no way Jihoon is joining him, especially with that goddamn evil smirk he has on his face. Woojin should never said anything about Minhyun, he should have known better considering Jihoon’s track record. He thinks he’s being helpful by trying to play cupid but nine out of ten times his advances fail miserably and quite frankly Woojin wants to keep his crush right away from Park Jihoon for once. 

Although it’s hard keeping secrets from your best friend, Woojin still tries to keep certain things in his life private – not because he doesn’t want to share everything with Jihoon, but because he has a fear that if he acknowledges things he thinks are important to another person that some screwed up magic in the universe will take it away from him – call it bad luck but Woojin thinks it’s more of a common curse.

“Come on, a couple bros having a coffee together before class? What a cute date,” Jihoon’s voice trails off back into the bathroom and Woojin groans loudly.

“You’re not coming Jihoon,” Woojin complains, taking one of the ramen packets from the cupboard and slipping it into the front pocket of his bag. He slips the post it note he had written on in afterwards just in time so that Jihoon couldn’t see.

“Yes, I am. Look, I’m ready so shall we go?” Jihoon asks, making a point to model his outfit he had put on.

_“For emphasis.”_

Woojin can hear the words so clearly though they don’t actually leave Jihoon’s mouth. But he can feel them radiating from his teasing glare. Woojin doesn’t bother fighting him, because whether he likes it or not Jihoon had already decided that he’s coming.

“Fine. But on one condition,“ Woojin says returning Jihoon’s gaze, “don’t embarrass me.”

“Can’t make any promises, Jinnie.” Jihoon winks at him, and moves past his bag to the door.

“Come on lover boy, let’s go!”

 

☼

 

“One Iced Americano,” Woojin says quickly.

He should be used to the barista’s gaze by now – he’d been coming to this café ever since before it was Love Paint. Ever since he first wandered in for his first coffee kick he’d been met with daggering stare of the fox-like worker beyond the counter; the first thing Woojin thought when he saw him was that he was enchantingly gorgeous. He was everything Woojin found attractive – his chiselled jaw line and immaculate bone structure, his fox-like eyes, even his hands were gorgeous – and Woojin isn’t ashamed to say that the barista is his ideal type. Even his name was pretty, and sometimes that made Woojin feel uncomfortable but all he had to do was remind himself that it’s not stalking and it’s not his fault that the café makes their employee’s wear nametags.

Woojin also isn’t ashamed (embarrassed though? definitely) to admit that he leaves the barista, Minhyun, gifts from time to time, and today he had planned to leave him a ramen packet to eat on his break but he doesn’t know how he’s going to do it without Jihoon noticing – he hadn’t been caught leaving him anything yet but Woojin has a strange feeling now that Jihoon was with him.

“Certainly, anything else today?” Minhyun asks over the counter. Woojin diverts his eyes after Minhyun continues their eye contact intensely. He scratches his neck out of discomfort and looks at Jihoon who gladly orders his own hot chocolate, surprised that Woojin was offering to pay.

“Just those two thanks.” He watches as Minhyun picks up the blue sharpie next to the till on the counter and uncaps the pen. He watches as Minhyun starts to move the sharpie to the takeaway cup and pause – like his internal system was malfunctioning.

“Sorry, your name?”

“Oh. Woojin,” Minhyun calmly writes the name across the plastic and hands Woojin his receipt.

“And your friends?" 

“Jihoon,” he replies and Jihoon coughs back a laugh at Woojin’s spitefulness that only he could pick up.

Woojin watches as he writes Jihoon’s name down and politely asks them to take a seat while they wait. He takes the next customers order and Woojin internally cries at how his customer service voice doesn’t budge even when the customer is getting a little bit difficult. On the other hand, Woojin thinks it’s intriguing that he can keep his composure so but he is after all, working at a job where you can’t afford to talk back to asshole customers. His co-worker shortly comes over to take him over and Minhyun starts to get to work behind the coffee machine.

Woojin doesn’t have to wait long for Minhyun to start making his order and within a couple of minutes his voice is calling out Woojin’s name over the counter. Woojin takes the coffee with both hands and bows quickly as he takes the cup from Minhyun.

“The hot chocolate isn’t too far away,” he says and Woojin nods, taking back his seat next to Jihoon.

“I have to say Jinnie, you do have good taste,” Jihoon says while licking his lips.

“Shut up, dickhead.” Woojin swears across the table and all Jihoon does is laugh. He knows what results he gets from pushing Woojin’s buttons and after fourteen years of friendship it never gets old – that’s the beauty they’ve both found in having a childhood friend.

Minhyun calls out Jihoon’s name and when Jihoon stands to receive his drink, Woojin sneakily pulls the ramen and note from his bag and places it on the table behind his bag so that it’s hidden (or so he thanks) from Jihoon. Jihoon wave his hand around for Woojin to come over so they can leave, and he hoists his backpack over his shoulders. He meets Jihoon’s side by the coffee machine and he looks over to see Minhyun looking at the two of them.

“Thank you,” he says as he smiles, his tooth hooking over his lip like it usually does. Minhyun smiles back, and bids him a good afternoon. Just when they’ve almost reached the door, Jihoon looks over his shoulder and sees the ramen on the table. Minhyun has already made his way over to it when Jihoon calls out to him.

“Yah, Woojin. I think your lunch fell out your –“ Jihoon doesn’t dare finish his sentence when he sees the note on the table addressed to the barista who was now picking it up. Minhyun looks to Woojin but Woojin had already bolted out of the store, Jihoon shortly following.

“What the fuck Jihoon! You know that I can never go back there now,” Woojin panicks. Jihoon does feel guilty, but then again Woojin knows that he can’t blame him for everything. This could be the opportunity he’d been waiting for to become something more than just another one of his regular customers.

“Look on the bright side, if he didn’t know it was you leaving them he now knows.” Woojin rolls his eyes but Jihoon is quick to try and convince him of the possible positive outcomes.

“Maybe he’ll say something to you next time about it and you can ask him for his number,” Jihoon suggests.

“Okay, one – that it absurd. Two – I’m not going back there for like, three months.”

“Stop being so dramatic Jinnie,” Jihoon sighs, slinging his arm around Woojin’s shoulders.

“You’re just saying that. We both know you’ll be back there tomorrow.” Woojin wishes that Jihoon wasn’t so sure of himself because Woojin is about to disappoint him by proving him wrong.

 

☼

 

Minhyun thought the ramen was a sweet gesture, but he didn’t understand why he would bring another boy with him. Woojin had never brought anyone with him before and it’s bugging him thinking about why things would suddenly change. Minhyun is a man of routine and this has strayed far away from the sequence of events that should usually happen when Woojin comes in for his caffeine fix. Especially the next day when Woojin doesn’t turn up, and the next day, and the day after that.

It makes Minhyun’s shifts boring, with no anticipation of him turning up. He’s disappeared like a ghost. Minhyun had thought that perhaps his classes had dumped a whole heap of assignments on him and he could no longer afford to make his way down to the café every morning; Minhyun could relate to that possibility with the amount of work being allocated during his night classes recently but after the other weeks events he thought to rule that option out. It seemed that he didn’t want Minhyun to know it was him leaving the gifts – or more likely that he didn’t want to be _seen_ leaving the gifts.

Week after week passes by and there’s no Woojin. Minhyun shouldn’t care as much as he should but he can’t help but fuel the nagging voice in his head wondering where on earth the young man ended up. What if he was visiting another café altogether? What if he could no longer fuel his caffeine needs with the best coffee beans in Seoul because he thinks that Minhyun hates him for leaving him gifts. It bugged the hell out of Minhyun, and every spare moment his mind was filled with thoughts of Woojin. He didn’t care like this before but why now?

He even brought it up to his brother Jinyoung, and even though he is four years younger than him, he still could see right through Minhyun and tell him the words he needed to hear.

“So, he’s been coming for the past what, five years to that store? Even before it was Love Paint, he’d been coming?” 

Minhyun nods furiously in Jinyoung’s direction from the kitchen, and Jinyoung kicks his feet up onto the arm rest of the couch.

“Hyung, I think you’ve secretly loved his attention all these years and now that it’s gone you’re having some serious withdrawal symptoms,” Minhyun scoffs at him, but he can’t help but agree with him on the inside.

“That’s beside the point Jinyoung,” 

“No hyung, it’s really not.” Jinyoung gets up and leans over the counter where Minhyun is cooking up their dinner.

“You like him, and you don’t know him so that’s annoying you even more. You’re an open book despite how much you try to close yourself off Minhyun,” Jinyoung offers a piece of chocolate from the jar on the counter but Minhyun declines it.

“What do you suggest I do?” Minhyun plants the knife on the cutting board and look seriously at his younger brother. “What do I do when all I know is his name?”

“You attend the same University, right? Surely if he’s a regular then that must be the case.”

Minhyun wonders if Jinyoung was onto something.

“Just keep your eyes open when you’re walking around campus perhaps you’ll spot him,” Jinyoung says through a mouthful of chocolate. Minhyun leans over the counter to ruffle his brother’s hair, following up with a pinch to his cheek in the most loving way possible.

“You, little brother, are a genius.”

Minhyun continues to cook their dinner, stupid smile plastered on his face by the thought of running into Woojin at University. Perhaps, it would be more than just a possibility, and more of a reality to come.

 

☼

 

Woojin snuck out the door just in time before Jihoon could pester him about where he was going. In all honesty, he just needed a break to clear his head from the assignment he needed to be doing alongside his caffeine deprivation. He hadn’t stepped foot in a café since the incident with Jihoon and suffering the consequences that come with going cold turkey from drinking coffee. 

He needed to sweat the stress out and after digging through his closet he finally found his old trusty skateboard and had snuck out shortly after. He had his headphones in and the music was loud and he started to gain momentum as he sped around one of the campus’s small courtyards. He thought it would be a quiet night on the campus but the night classes had seemed to have slipped his memory which is why he was so surprised to be tumbling off his board after barely missing crashing into a student. The student doesn’t even look Woojin’s way and it just pisses Woojin off even further.

He thinks he’s dreaming when he hears a familiar honey-like voice calling out his name. When he looks up from his spot on the concrete he sees Minhyun jogging over towards him. He offers a hand out to him to help him out and Woojin gladly takes it.

“Hey, are you okay?” Minhyun asks with wide bug eyes. He scans over Woojin’s body and notices the rip across his jeans where they sit over his knees and the puffiness from the grazes on his palms.

“I’ve had worse,” Woojin tries to laugh but when he puts pressure on his right leg he finds a searing pain shoot down his knee to his ankle. Minhyun swiftly moves to support Woojin’s body, and places an arm around his waist for further support.

“Let me check you out, it’s what I study for in the first place.” Minhyun gleams when he says that, and Woojin thinks he really must praise his field of study and even more so to help someone out when they need it the most because shit, did Woojin need it. Minhyun helps him over to one of the benches and asks Woojin to lift his sore leg up onto the seat so he can take a look.

“You’re a med student?” Woojin asks, hissing as Minhyun accidentally pulls some fabric away from the scratches that had already started to dry. He pulled a mini first aid kit from his canvas bag and started to sift through its contents.

Minhyun nods, “I’m pre-med.”

“Ah,” Woojin realises that this makes sense with Minhyun’s disposition – it was so fitting for him. He was so warm that Woojin couldn’t imagine his hospitality being used in another field. Minhyun gets to work, wiping alcohol swabs on the different areas that had come into contact with the concrete. 

“You stopped coming,” Minhyun mumbles, voice lost behind his concentration.

But Woojin still hears him. 

“I did,” he replies back nervously.

“Is it because of,” Minhyun begins, choosing to finish off his sentence by motioning eating a ramen packet instead of saying the actual word. Woojin nods his head with a nervous smile and Minhyun begins to giggle.

“Wow. You’re that into me?”

Woojin goes beet red and can’t help but cough from such a sudden comment.

“I-Into you?” Woojin stutters, and when Minhyun moves his hands to place a plaster over his knee from his first aid kid Woojin kicks out with surprise.

“Why else would you leave me gifts like that?” Minhyun questions.

“I guess I thought you deserved them…” Woojin trails off. 

“And now I don’t?” Minhyun teases.

“It’s not that, I was just worried you’d think it was weird to know I was the one leaving them there,” Woojin tells him. He feels a weight lifting from his chest but it’s just replaced with the anxiety that Minhyun is about to tell him his little crush is in no way reciprocated.

And then the unexpected happened. 

“I actually thought that guy, was your boyfriend. But then you left this and I was really confused… and a little disappointed.”

Woojin’s ears are hot and he probably looks like a blushing mess right now in front of Minhyun. 

“Disappointed?" 

“Well, I do like you coming to the store.” Minhyun hums as he cleans up the rest of Woojin’s injuries, resting a hand on his knee once he finishes.

“Can you come back? Tomorrow?” Minhyun asks with only slightly pleading eyes.

“What’s in it for me?” Woojin banters.

“Free Americanos, every day. On me,” Minhyun promises him. He holds out his arm for Woojin to hang onto as he stands and he feels adrenaline running through his body.

“I wouldn’t want you to think I’m using you,” Woojin murmurs, unsure what to make of this offer.

“Consider it me repaying you for all you’ve given to me,” Minhyun sings.

“We can even do dinner, if you want?” Minhyun questions.

“Okay, I’ll hold you to it.” Woojin gleams as he thanks Minhyun for helping, bidding him a farewell as they part ways. Woojin was shaking from embarrassment, excitement and everything in between.

Minhyun was flirting with him. And it was _so_ obvious. Woojin questions why he had to be so hot headed and stop going to the café, when his very presence was something Minhyun looked forward to everyday. And so the next day, he starts going back, one; for his free coffee, two; but also to flirt back with the cute barista behind the counter.

And the day after that.

And the day after that, and the day after that.

 


End file.
